Woke
up to have a Slight Risk of Severe Storms a couple
hours to the east from my house. The Storm
Prediction Center also gave that area a 5% tornado
risk.
My son Ryan was
out of town on a vacation and our other chase
partner Brian Stertz chose to sit out this minimal
risk day. Knowing that, I elected not to take
part in a solo chase, ....that is until my friend
Lucas Munzlinger called me and talked me into
chasing with him and giving this day a chance.
We met up in mid-morning and headed out to our
initial target of Chrisman, Illinois near the
Indiana border. We had a relaxing lunch in
Marshall, Illinois as we looked over data for any
changes, then on to our target.
Radar was showing several octopus like legs sticking
out from the blob of rain to the north. We
chose to target the leg in the middle and picked a
wide open spot at the Paris, Illinois High School
parking lot to just watch how things would unfold as
the storms approached.
We watched the
storms grow into low topped supercells as they
moved over us. Had some very interesting
structure, but only very minor rotation.
These storms
began to weaken as they moved east, so we
latched on the growing line of storms to the
west. Along the line, there would
occasionally be just enough spin embedded in
the line to prompt tornado warnings.
We
stuck with the line of storms viewing several
updrafts as we traveled the backroads along the
Illinois/Indiana border and even into the Wabash
River Valley with many of the roads giving views
that no where near optimal. Had a few updrafts
that tried to spin something up, but were very
short-lived attempts. We were also treated
to a low-on-the-horizon rainbow.
As
these storms moved east, we saw a weakening trend
to the storms and headed back toward I-70 for the
return trip home. Got one last tornado
warning as we got to Terra Haute, Indiana.
The return looked so poorly developed on radar, we
did not even pursue it.
August 05, 2023 
